The Press: Tracy Detected?

Cook County State’s Attorney John S. Boyle suspected there was dirty work afoot, and he put his suspicions in a letter to the Chicago Tribune. “I have received many complaints from police officers,” wrote he, “concerning the manner in which . . . Richard Tracy lives. They refer to his $100,000 home, 1951 Cadillac convertible . . . They are sort of hinting that a grand jury investigation might be a very helpful thing for the community.”

Boyle was not alone; many another reader had written to the newspapers to complain about Detective Dick Tracy’s suspiciously high standard of living. Their question: Has the nation’s favorite funny-page detective been a grafter all these years? The uproar was so loud that it reached the ears of Tracy’s strip father, Cartoonist Chester Gould. He decided to have Pat Patton, the strip’s police chief and Tracy’s boss, call Tracy in last week for an explanation. Even from Dick Tracy, the nemesis of criminals for 20 years, it sounded thin. Said Detective Tracy: “I’ve had a steady job here . . . for 20 years. I was a bachelor for almost 19 of those 20 years, and a penny pincher!

I saved my dough! … I bought that old corner property during the real estate depression . . . for $3,600 . . . There’s a nice little plaster—a mortgage.”

And the big car? Well, said Tracy somewhat sheepishly, he had made a little deal which he had kept secret. An auto manufacturer sold him the car cheap so he could use it to test special police gadgets. But the explanations weren’t enough, especially since $500,000 in jewels and cash, held as evidence in police cases, was missing from the police vaults.

The fuller explanation of Cartoonist Gould was no more convincing. Said he: “I don’t exactly know Dick’s salary, but I do know that he’s always been pretty much of a Scotchman. Hell, he saved his money. The house itself might well be now worth $50,000. But I don’t think he spent much more than $25,000 for it.” He isn’t sure how big the modern mansion really is. His daughter, Jean, had drawn the plans, never got beyond the first floor, which contains a mere six rooms. As for the car, well, it isn’t exactly a Cadillac, and it is two years old anyway.

At week’s end, Dick Tracy had 24 hours to clear himself. In the never-never land of the comics, the 24 hours would take seven weeks. But Chet Gould was confident: “Utmost faith—that’s exactly what I have in old Dick. There’s no mystery about his finances . . . He’s an honest guy.”